TARP may hurt small banks

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Not only did George W. Bush’s Wall Street bailout transfer wealth from taxpayers to financial titans, it also may be hurting smaller banks. The AP reports on a new study on the fallout of the TARP:

In the end, that could mean that the biggest banks get even bigger, the report says. Dozens or hundreds of bailed-out banks could collapse or consolidate because they can’t afford their obligations to taxpayers, it says. That would leave the handful of biggest banks with an even larger share of the banking system.

“The result could be that ‘too big to fail’ banks grow even bigger,” Warren said.

the Washington influence game, which bestows huge benefits on the dominant players in a market, means that government programs to “help” an industry frequently end up as government programs to benefit an industry’s largest, most entrenched players.

It’s almost enough to make you suspect that Big Government is good for Big Business and bad for everyone else.